


Visiting hours

by TheSingerThatYouWanted (orphan_account)



Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5010412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/TheSingerThatYouWanted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jones visits Dan after the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visiting hours

**Author's Note:**

> It's pretty much standard now. Get bored, write something Dan/Jones, repeat endlessly. So yeah. Pointless fluff mixed with a healthy (or possibly very unhealthy) dose of Ashcroft angst, anyone?

"I love you."  
Three words. Three fucking words. It always comes down to words in the end, really. Dan's whole life has been built on the bloody things, although he's found that increasingly difficult to believe these days- 'vajazzle', for Christ's sake, sounded like someone had eaten the dictionary and pieced together the first few letters they shit out the next day- and he's always had a sneaking suspicion that one day they'd end it, too. As usual, there's little satisfaction in being proved right.  
"Dan? Wake up, mate, please. Come home. I- fuck, I love you. Just fucking wake up."  
Jones won't shut up, won't ever shut up, and this soft, broken whisper is somehow even more grating than the aural catastrophe he's usually playing. Dan _is_ awake; has been for a while, too, though he has no intention of letting Jones know that. He doesn't want to even speculate on what would happen if the DJ knew Dan could hear every word he's said since arriving in the hospital that morning.  
"I'm sorry for not doing more to, like, alleviate the shit. I'm just loud all the time, trying to drown out all the bad parts of me and the bad parts of the world, but I s'pose it wasn't much help, right?"  
A sniffing sound, a hesitant hitch of breath. Dan feels his own throat constrict in response but suppresses the urge to cry, to show yet more weakness, by imagining how the Idiots back at SugarApe would laugh. Dan Ashcroft, Preacher Man, falling apart at the seams. What a fucking joke.  
"Shit, 'm sorry. It's my fault. If you want to just bugger off and find somewhere new, then I get it, mate. I'd like you to stay, though. Fuck, I'd give anything for you to stay."  
He sighs, and Dan aches to move, to open his eyes, to do _something_ , but right then he can't tell if his lips want to kiss Jones or hurl abuse at him and the moment is too delicate for him to ever contemplate taking that risk. Everything seems wrong, the foundations he'd once thought were solid crumbling beneath him the moment he'd realised that at some point in the last couple of years kissing Jones- _wanting_ to kiss Jones- had gone from a joke, never gonna happen in a million years, to a real, tangible possibility. Really, though, the foundations had been wearing away for a long time. He'd seen a documentary once, when he was too hammered to get up and change the channel, about these snow formations you got on mountains. Cornices, they were called. A thin crust of snow extending out for a few metres above thin air, seeming solid enough to walk on. Just another part of the mountain if you didn't know what you were looking for, but as insubstantial as air when it came to actually holding you up. Dan feels as though he's standing right on the edge, and Jones' words sound like an approaching avalanche.  
There is the sound of a chair scraping on linoleum floor as Jones stands up, presumably getting ready to leave. Dan finds himself straining to catch every word.  
"I'll be back tomorrow," he promises earnestly. "Bring you some half decent coffee an' a couple of pages of the usual self-indulgent wank Yeah? publishes while 'Rape's one bit of talent is in hospital. You can have a bit of a rant, I promise I'll listen. The nurses say you'll definitely be awake then. Doing much better than you first looked, they said earlier. I told them you were a stubborn bastard."  
He giggles quietly, though there's little humour to it.  
"Takes more than a two-storey window to slow Dan Ashcroft down."  
There's a moment of silence, during which Dan wants desperately to open his eyes a crack, just to see how Jones has really been holding up in his absence. His voice sounds slightly unsteady, and Dan knows his flatmate's track record when it comes to taking care of himself. He'll run himself into the ground before admitting he needs help. They've always had that in common.  
On the edge of his hearing, Jones sighs.  
"That's me for today. Limited visiting hours an' all that. I think I've said everything, though."  
'Yeah,' thinks Dan as the squeak of trainers on the polished floor fades into the distance, leaving him with no more distractions; no choice but to think about what he was going to tell Jones the next day. 'And I wish you hadn't.'

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I own none of this but the plot. Sorry.


End file.
